Monthly Archive for December, 2014

: December, 2014

Priorities and practices that took hold when the party was organized around northern commercial interests are being torn down and replaced as the Dixiefication of the GOP reaches a new phase. Republicans will enter the next nominating cycle without a presumed candidate. It appears that for the first time since Goldwater the base will choose the nominee for the White House. …

Black families in Lawndale in the Fifties and Sixties had their capital and power drained away to serve the interests of real estate speculators. Black families in Lawndale today have their access to the lowest rungs of our economic ladder lifted away from them to protect the interests of bureaucratic institutions that feed on their disenfranchisement. What happened in Lawndale then is what’s happening in Lawndale now. So why do Republicans find this so difficult to discuss? …

Blight-ridden stretches of our inner cities are being restored to their former splendor, but those burned out hulks have a crucial story to tell. Looting, both legal and extralegal, is built into the institutional fabric of our urban culture. Before the last crack house in Chicago’s West Town becomes a yoga studio we should stop to bear witness. The history of these troubled battleground neighborhoods holds clues that could help us understand our illness and its cure. …

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